Rising smartphone player Huawei has launched the Ascend P6, an Android Jelly Bean device it claims is the world's slimmest smartphone.

With a metallic body and 4.7-inch LCD display, the Ascend P6 is 6.18mm thick, making it the world's slimmest smartphone, according to Huawei.

Although it is a shade thinner than Apple's 7.6mm thick iPhone 5, the Ascend P6 is a little heavier, weighing in at 120g versus the latest iPhone's 112g. Still, the P6 is lighter than Samsung's 130g, five-inch Galaxy S4.

The Ascend has a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 2GB RAM, 8GB on board storage, 8-megapixel rear camera and five megapixel front facing camera. The device can take 1080P full HD video.

Huawei has also built its own UI on the Android platform called Emotion, but unlike its Ascend P2, which can run on LTE networks, the P6 can only use W-CDMA and GSM networks.

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The Ascend P6 will be available in black, white and pink and will ship in China from June and Europe from July, and will reportedly cost around €449.

European carriers that will sell the device include Vodafone, Telefonica, Orange and Three, while retailers include Carphone Warehouse, TalkTalk, Media Markt, Saturn, and TIM. Online it will be available through Amazon and CDiscount.

Already the world's second largest network equipment provider, Huawei has risen quickly to become the world's fourth largest maker of smartphones thanks to its popularity in China, where it has been able to deliver lower-cost alternatives to Apple and Samsung flagships.

According to analyst firm IDC, Huawei shipped 9.9 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2013, the same quarter a year ago. Its growth was second only to Korean electronics company LG, which shipped 10.3 million, up 110 percent year on year. Samsung shipped 70.7 million in Q1, ahead of Apple's 37.4 million.

Liam Tung is an Australian business technology journalist living a few too many Swedish miles north of Stockholm for his liking. He gained a bachelors degree in economics and arts (cultural studies) at Sydney's Macquarie University, but hacked (without Norse or malicious code for that matter) his way into a career as an enterprise tech, s...
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